Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Batch 210, another cider, but with berries

I guess this counts as a double batch day, sort of. I made a cider to go along with the Arrogant Bastard wannabe clone that I made today. I had some trouble, and ended up with extra wort, which I wanted anyway to be able to feed the yeast for a cider. This is pretty much the same as the cider I've made before, but this time I'm planning to add berries.

Put that into the fermenter, add 2 gallons of water, pitched 1 cup of thick slurry of Wyeast 1272.

The plan is to let this ferment out, then heat 4 lbs of berries (raspberry, strawberry, blueberry mix) in 1 gallon of water, and add it to the fermenter. The sugar from the berries should cause fermentation to restart, let it go for another week, then rack and keg. The idea here is by adding the fruit later on, the fermentation is less likely to drive off the fruit flavors.

As usual, I don't have an OG for this.

Update, May 15, 2018, racked into a keg today. The hydrometer sample tastes like fruit juice, no hot alcohol flavors at all. Lots of berries left behind:

And it looks really clear coming out of the bucket:

One more picture, this is one of the most useful pieces of equipment I have for brewing: